Let the past colour the future

By Matt Ross

On 22nd October, the Tree & Shrub Growers held an online meeting to discuss Recycled Colour™, an exciting new product development by Garden City Plastics, that will help close the loop on recycling of Polypropylene.

Attendees had the opportunity to hear from Matthew Mills, National Sales and Marketing Manager at Garden City Plastics. The session was expertly hosted by Heath McKenzie of Australian Growing Solutions.

Whilst plants may be the hero of our industry, the pot it inhabits is pivotal. Garden City Plastics (GCP), Australia’s largest supplier of pots and containers for wholesale nurseries, landscape and gardening industries, have developed a process whereby they can fulfill any customer order using recycled materials.

GCP have just launched their Recycled Colour™ range. Having previously worked with virgin materials to supply customers with coloured pots, Recycled Colour™ uses 100 per cent recycled materials collected from Australian homes. This is a big step towards closing the loop on the recycling of Polypropylene.

With the quality of curb side collected recyclables increasing, due to the public being more educated around sorting waste and more engaged with sustainability practices, the time is right for Recycled Colour™.

The onus now is on the industry to support this fantastic initiative and opt for recycled pots. And why wouldn’t customers opt for recycled pots rather than virgin pots? Matthew explains that they expect some customers to resist the transition because many of us are creatures of habit, “there’s a perception that it’s easier to do things as we’ve always done them, in this example, to continue to order virgin plant pots.”

The other perceived drawback is that not every colour in the spectrum is available, due to the predominance of blue in collected household recyclables the Recycled Colour™ range offers darker shades of ten colours. This logic is purely superficial and is dwarfed by the environment benefits it delivers. In fact, the darker coloured pots perform better because there is virtually zero light penetration and the roots grow in the dark as they should, this is not the case with the virgin coloured pots.

And it turns out that our industry are already a leader in recycling and sustainability practices, and have been for decades. In 2019, GCP recycled 10million kgs of PP5 in their Melbourne factory alone. That’s an awful lot of plant pots for our industry and an incredible amount of plastic diverted from

landfill. Once you multiply those figures across the entire country, you begin to understand the scale of the sustainability gains GCP and the horticulture industry are delivering.

Another beauty of manufacturing pots from recycled Polypropylene (PP5) is that, if treated correctly, PP5 can be recycled over and over again. With the latest Government Budget outlining that recyclables being sent from Australia to overseas will cease, we now have a material, in plastic, that will always exist, we can ignore the problem or we can look for ways to ensure that rather than sending it to landfill we find alternate uses for it.

GCP also have the capacity to ‘turn off’ the production of pots made from virgin materials at any time, and if the customers stop demanding it, they’d be delighted to do so. As ever, the consumer has the power to make informed choices that can have a positive impact on the health of our people and planet.

And GCP do not draw the line at their work with recycled pots, their sustainability efforts are embedded throughout their business. The cardboard packaging they use is sourced from VISY with a high level of recycled board grade. They work with the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO) to highlight the great sustainability measures adopted within our industry and to create a set of packaging guidelines that are tailored to the horticulture industry. They also work with APCO and Greenlife Industry Australia (GIA) to close the loop on packaging across Australia by recalling and reintroducing black and virgin coloured PP5 into the recycling system. They work with Biological Services on Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and organic integration. They work with COIR for protective cropping and have found a partner in Sri Lanka whose values are aligned with their own.

There is no doubt that GCP are leading the way in sustainability, it’s now up to the horticultural industry in Australia to follow and choose to choose recycled.

Find out more at www.recycledcolour.com.au

A big thank you to Matthew for sharing his time, passion and knowledge with the attendees.

The Tree and Shrub Growers of Victoria is the largest sectional interest group of the Nursery & Garden Industry Victoria (NGIV). The group consists of members of the NGIV involved with nursery plant production and allied trade and provides fantastic networking opportunities across all areas of industry.

Contact NGIV to find out more and learn how to become a member of the Tree and Shrub Growers of Victoria.